No Shepard to Lead Me Home
by SyriMoon
Summary: I knew for certain there was a God; there's no way my life could have fallen apart so beautifully by accident. From the fallen queen to the fallen woman, no one lived in peace with a name like mine.


I have never been within the walls of a church. Or at least, not within my living memory. I'm told I was Christened as a baby, though of course this was far too long ago for me to have any recollection. I often wonder about that day though, and whether it was my true name father presented to the clergy. I couldn't imagine a man of God devoting a child to the church, bearing a name such as mine.

Perhaps that is why God turned His back on me as a child; He never knew me, only the lie I was made to be. He met me under a falsehood, and could not find me when called by my true name. I'm sure eventually He stopped looking for me, but that's fine. I stopped seeking Him years ago.

The pages under my fingers are sturdy but worn from so much use. A few are dog-eared, signs of my endless studies, a vandalism I had been soundly disciplined for. Desecrating the word of God in its physical form, father had told me, was as much an offense as denying His word in action, in sin.

My hand twitched, feeling the grain of the paper between my thumb and forefinger, hovering the raised page for a moment before bending it towards me, and creasing it stiffly with the breadth of my nail. The pleasure was from a gritty sort of triumph, disobeying the commandments of both men who I might call Father. To one, I was surely not among the select, and had never been, not with my transgressions. A bent corner in Leviticus was hardly my most heathenish crime. To the other, I held a bitter desire in my heart for him to find the new mark. Perhaps he'd give me one to match.

No, I had never sat in a pew, under the vivid tinge of stained glass. I had never heard choirs sing, nor did I know many hymns myself. Father could not sing and frankly I doubted I could either. Not that I was eager to try. I had never heard a sermon preached by anyone but the man who raised me, and I'd never been taught the rhymes of Sunday school children, though I knew the stories they condensed by heart, of guiding stars and towers built to reach the heavens, of men building ships to preserve life on earth. How Noah's fable has bee a favorite of mine growing up. A pity it was an absolute fairytale.

I scoffed as I breezed the pages, my eyes catching small fragments of passages, one short line more than enough to entice my memory to recite the paragraph, the chapter. There were a few books I knew in entirety. I could name them all, all 66, in order.

I had once sat on the rug at father's feet as he read these stories to me. My lessons came not from the altar, but from his armchair, where he would sit every evening after dinner, Sabbath or no, and read to me. Mary, Lazarus, Jonah, I knew all their words and knew them well, and had once gobbled every phrase my childish brain was fed, accepting the fantastic and whimsical as though they were sweets; eagerly and unconditionally, not asking why this was being offered to me.

"I was as much a fool then as I am now," I heard myself hiss, and I started skimming pages almost brashly, looking, searching the book I had been hypocritically taught to live my life by. "Moses, Eve, Goliath, Martha, Peter-AH! There I am!"

What pride I had felt the night father told me he had chosen my name from this very tomb, my stomach bubbling at the thought of sharing a name with someone so important that they might be immortalized not only in Heaven, but in the Bible as well.

How horribly mistaken.

Though each line of text was as familiar and entrenched to me as each scar upon my back, I let my eyes follow the print all the same, drinking in her story, my namesake, 1 Kings…

"And against Jezebel too, the Lord said, 'The dogs shall devour Jezebel in the district of Jezreel…'" her punishment for her sins, to be brought down by the almighty hand of God.

Though I whispered these words in my silent office, all to my own company, father's voice followed mine as I quoted, for I'd heard this story as many times form his own lips as my own, usually flavored with savory delight where mine was shaky and afraid. To be eaten by wild dogs, to become nothing more than a meal for them, shreds of flesh torn from one's body while still alive enough to thrash, scream, beg…such a fate, truly, was befitting a human, particularly such ambitious little women, but to hear my own name woven into the story…

"Can you image such a death, son?" father had prompted my terrified self that first night. "How much pain she must have been in? She was a sinner, and even now her name is synonymous for lustful, uppity women. Do you think those whores deserve anything better? For disobeying the word of God?"

Of course I had told him no. Be it the Biblical queen or the fallen woman on the streets, such a title seemed to carry a curse with it; nothing of value or moral worth could thrive under such a burden of a name. And father had chosen this, just for me…

I'm sure, now, that he knew how deeply my transgressions would run, and that I didn't deserve a more holy name. After all, I had done nothing in my life worth piety or Godliness. How many sins could I be condemned for? Lying, murder, adultery, sodomy, incest, prostitution- How fitting my beloved name was! So much blood stained unto my hands, unseen but still felt, like the touch of the gentlemen father sometimes gave me to, as a favor of entertainment. Father had taught me so well to please them; all to more befit the name of the fallen queen.

After that night I had lost my disillusionment with scripture; the Lord was not the kind, paternal spirit he seemed at first. No, he was as vengeful as he was harsh, with no tolerance for those who should stumble before him. He lured you to his breast with loving words and promises of a kind embrace, of love, acceptance, nurturance, only to turn around and hurt you, punish you for the countless reasons you had failed him.

So much like my father on earth, who would coddle me and kiss me, just before his whip would snap the taught skin of my back, splitting it open like the ripe flesh of a plumb.

Perhaps this was why I still clung to and feared his Word. Were it not for him, I'm sure I wouldn't have even this sentimental attachment to the handsome engraved book I held. It was he who had instructed me on its contents, forced me to memorize long passages and whisper them back exactly while his whip struck me, or while he took me. He was so fond of that one, hearing my recitations of lust and chastity as I panted underneath him.

Still I knew them. Revelations. "But as for the cowards, the unfaithful, the depraved-"

Craving his touch, words of damnation sweetly strung between my groans and begging him to not stop, please don't stop…

"Murderers, the unchaste, sorcerers, idol worshippers, and deceivers of every sort,"

I wanted that attention to last. Father's one way of showing how much he loved me. It was…the only way he knew how to love me.

"Their lot is in the burning pool of fire and sulfur, which is the…the second death." My voice now whispered the lines, though before I would all but scream them.

The only way he knew how to love me…for how else could he love a whore like me? It was only through his selflessness, I know, that he could even stand to touch me, to give me even this small token of affection. They followed so easily.

God too was a father, or so I was told. I saw little resemblance borne between Him and Alexis, though. True, that both had played a part in my creation, and I had suffered cruelly under the intentions of both, there stayed one crucial difference between them.

Father loved me where God had abandoned me.

It was a painful attachment, what father had for me, but it could never be any other way. I was after all the bastard child, illegitimate, with a penchant for disobedience.

Truly, it sometimes seemed more that father showed to me the being God should have been. Father offered me forgiveness again and again, and though I never asked for it, he always lavished me undeservingly in his mercy. He helped me atone for my sins where I fell short, the evidence splayed across my still bleeding back.

It was such an act of mercy that had me here in my office in the first place, taking the book from a high shelf. I hadn't studied its message in so long, save for my recitations. Still, I knew where to find anything and everything within its covers.

All knowing, all loving, all merciful might God, who would guide even the worst sinner back to paradise, if only he should ask it, will it…couldn't I do the same? Couldn't I beg for God's forgiveness just as I use to father? I took lives, I soiled my body, I sought the breath of my own baby brother…

No, salvation was not for me. It was as father always told me, to truly be granted forgiveness form God, one must show true sorrow and remorse.

I felt no remorse, no desire for atonement.

Although I would be a liar if I did not admit…I feared for my next life.

I knew I was damned, my soul awaiting Hell since conception, and it was through sheer denial and displacement of attention that I could even gt out of bed in the morning, knowing what awaited me in death. Father had verbally painted such lush imagery of the pit, where the souls of the wicked were burnt and shredded and beaten, where hounds ate at the very innards I had bathed in. Even know, when spying dried blood, dark and unmovable beneath my fingernails, he would first scold me for my appearance, than remind me, Thou shalt not kill, Jizabel.

Ah yes, but one shall obey thy father, I always added to myself, and I had, oh how I had obeyed. My life was about obedience and pleasing that man, more than it had ever been about pleasing or serving the Lord. Had it not been father's words that guided through religion, I'm sure I would have embraced atheism so long ago, but I couldn't. I had been too firmly convinced of the Father who had known me in heaven, and abandoned me here on earth to deny his existence.

My idle page turning had become tense; I wasn't even seeing the words, just wanting the noise of the brushing of paper. I ruffled them with such force now that I wrinkled more than a few.

What use did it do me, to believe in God? He wouldn't have me, so to deny him surely would cause me no more pain than I was already in for. I knew also that it wasn't merely to please my father that I believed in God, for he was hardly a devout or model Christian. I'm sure he would be among my company in hell.

The page gazing up at me sang the praises of heroes, of the Virgin, of great kings, of the savior. I scoffed; some savior. No one had come to rescue me.

My back gave another sudden pull, and I grimaced, suddenly feeling more disenchanted than usual at father's particular brand of love. I had earned this and I knew it but…but he had been so much harsher than usual tonight, and I knew I world hardly be able to move come morning. Cassian would fret and flutter around me obnoxiously, and father would preach, and just the prospect of all this was magnifying the pain of my lashings, as well as a sudden ache at my temples.

The book grew heavy in my lap, already far from a weightless read. How could so many millions of people see this as a work of inspiration, or love, devotion, to inspire worship and praise at the God of these pages? This was the deity who had given me to a man who sold me, who had allowed him to take my mother away, my sisters, my home. God, he had sent me here, knowing who I would be, knowing I deserved nothing better.

And still I believed in Him. How could I not? Random chances of fate could never have put me here. My life was a work of poetry, far too perfectly crafted to be the result of happenstance.

Father had given me this Bible as a gift, not long after he gave me the cross I still cherished around my neck. and it was a handsome book, but looking at it now I was disgusted by it. A gift given so kindly form my father's love, unaware of the pain it would grow to cause me. Guilt upset my stomach, making my inside ache as deeply as my outside. Here he'd wanted to fervently all my life to share this with me, to teach his religion to me, and now I harbored little but hatred for the cornerstone of the faith, for the very word of God.

I know father's intentions were noble and selfless (I had to believe they were…) but the pages almost mocked me. Where they praised the wonder and hope of salvation, all I saw were flames, and the words of the messiah did nothing to enrich my life. Hypocrisy, lies, hatred-

And my eyes fell upon the name I reviled more than my own. Cain. Such a shame, really; Cain is such a handsome name when played to the ear, simple, strong, rich. Pity it had such as horrific a connotation to it as Jizabel.

I lay my palm over the page, and it may have been an effect of the blood loss and pain, but I swear I could hear his voice, my brother's this time instead of father's. My fingers brushed over the ink as though expecting to read it as a blind man would read Braille. For some reason it felt so wrong to see that name, and the other, a derivative of my own, and the very reason it has been misspelled, so flat and nondescript on the paper. Cain was too powerful a presence in my heart to be rendered as nothing more that blank lines, not to be felt, no texture of its own. And for some reason, this just fueled my ill temper.

I decided the page needed texture. It crumbled with ease in my hand, ripping quite cleanly at the binding. And once I felt the satisfying crunch in my fist, I wanted to feel it again, so I ripped the page following, this time leaving a jagged remnant still attached. It felt wonderful, almost exhilarating, to be able to erase the name of Cain from this work. If only I could so effortlessly remove him from my life in the same way! To grab hold of the half brother, who had robbed me of my happiness with father, and rip him, shred him with my blade, my nails, anything. Anything to be rid of him…

I had long since passed the story of the man who took the life of his brother (I swear, I will be the Cain to your Abel someday…) But was well into Numbers before I tok note. And I didn't care. My hands had taken on a fervor, shredding the papers from the book, half watching them fly and flutter to land whisper soft against the hardwood, some in full pages and others the size of postage stamps.

Judges came out whole, binding glue still adhering the pages together, and with it went the first pages of 1 Samuel. I could scarcely see the words in Esther; something was blurring my vision, something hot streaming down my face, wetting the miniscule sentences of Jeremiah, before they too were subject to my outburst.

Peter, Mathew, Luke, almost as satisfying as tearing apart the flesh and blood of a living human, rather than just their writing. Almost. Paper was lifeless, it didn't bleed, it wasn't warm. I needed to make it warm…

Though nothing before 2 Corinthians remained in the collapsed and mangled covers, I flung it into the fire all the same, followed by the remnants of my fit, flung it by handfuls, chapters, when had I started crying? Why was I…it didn't matter. All that mattered was how good it felt, to scream, frustration, so many years of it, welling to eh surface like the blood that still caked down my back.

I was far too near the flames when I finally collapsed, sobbing, among the tiniest flecks of paper, scarcely large enough to bare whole words, but I didn't care. After all, l hadn't I better be getting use to the heat?

Through the tears I tried to reign in, something glittered, something blazing black and orange; my cross, catching the firelight, turning on its beaded chain.

Whether it was my body or the flames that warmed it, it felt pleasant in my hand, and I took a deep, shuddering gasp, trying to calm myself.

I watched the Bible burn, not sure if should take this as a triumph over God in defiance, or if I should be fearing retribution, from either of my fathers.

Oh yes, I believed in God. He was there, I knew it without question. For you see, I've met the devil, and know him well. In my father's delusional mind, in my own sick and selfish heart, in the blood I bathe myself in, he's ever-present, and there could be no fallen angel with no God. I'm sure of it.

The Bible says so.

)o(

Thank you all for reading! I hope you enjoyed.

Although Jizabel's teachings were given from a Protestant point of view (66 books) all quotations are taken from the Fireside Catholic Youth Bible- I do not own a Protestant translation.

Lottsa Love,

Syri


End file.
